Giving in a digital world

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Mapping the Social Networking world – handy country-by-country data

Posted by Bryan on June 8, 2009

Social Network Map

One of the regular topics that comes-up when I’m discussing the potential of online social networks with fundraisers from outside the UK is just which social networks are dominant in their particular country. Because, contrary to how it might feel from the UK or US perspective, when you go further afield the Social Network world doesn’t start and end with Facebook.

So, I’m always on the look-out for data which helps shed some light on the relative strengths of different sites across different countries – and two such sources cropped-up over the last couple of days that I thought you might find useful, wherever you happen to be based.

The first is from TechCrunch.com, who have just updated their global valuation of social networks. While this is certainly interesting from the overall valuation standpoint, it’s also great that they have provided a link to all of the Comscore base data underpinning their model – which gives a handy snapshot of unique visitor numbers for 26 social networking sites across 17 countries.

The second is a little less robust, but still provides some useful insight into the different sites prevalent in different countries. This comes from Vincenzo Cosenza’s blog, where he has used Alexa and Google Trends for Websites data to develop his own visual mapping of the Social Networking world.

While I’m pointing-out free research relating to Social Networks, you might also want to take a look at the Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report released a little earlier this year. This is US-based, but provides some interesting insights into where and how US nonprofits are active on Social Network sites, which should also be of interest to anyone interested in this area of nonprofit communications and fundraising.

Posted in Facebook, MySpace, Online fundraising, Social networking | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Kiva launches open-source API – meaning YOU could develop the next big Kiva fundraising application

Posted by Bryan on February 6, 2009

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Kiva, the incredibly successful 3-year old non-profit peer-to-peer microlending organisation, has just announced release of an Application Programmers Interface (API) that will enable any developer to create new tools and applications supporting the Kiva lending community.

Using the API, developers will be able to access public data from Kiva – such as a full list of entrepreneurs requesting funds or the latest lending activity – and integrate it into whatever type of application they care to develop. Suggestions from Kiva to start developers thinking include an iPhone or Blackberry App or a map showing the real-time transfer of funds around the globe.

While this might sound all rather geeky, it is an incredibly important move for Kiva – as it acknowledges that as an organisation it can only deliver so much functional enhancement of its website and associated tools within the natural restrictions of time and money. By enabling any developer in the world to build tools that directly integrate with Kiva they stand to achieve a breadth and speed of functional evolution and audience reach far beyond anything they could hope for alone.

This is just what we saw when Facebook (5-years old this week) became the first of the mainstream online social networks to launch an API back in May 2007. Suddenly countless thousands of developers began adding functionality to the Facebook platform – everything from business applications and fundraising tools to food fight and zombie games – all of which fueled an incredibly rapid growth in member numbers.

Since then many other social network sites have followed Facebook in offering such support for application developers but, as far as I know, Kiva is the first non-profit site to take advantage of ‘going open’.

Who will be next? Will GlobalGiving follow suite or will a new entrant to the online fundraising world like soon to launch Play it Forward beat the established players to it? Whoever it is, I predict that we’ll see a lot more open-source API fundraising opportunities from online fundraisin

Posted in Facebook, Fundraising, Online fundraising, Social networking, Widgets | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Handy demographics application for Facebook Fundraisers

Posted by Bryan on January 28, 2009

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As use of online social networks continues to grow worldwide, one of the most important questions to ask is how the user profile of different sites differs – to give an indication as to whether the type of consumers you want to engage with are actually spending time there in significant numbers. In particular, fundraisers tend to be watching for growth in older user groups (at least 45+) as these tend to best match with their traditional supporter profile.

With this in mind, I spotted a handy application today that helps answer this question, at least for Facebook users – and with over 150m active users worldwide that’s often the first site considered by marketers and fundraisers. It comes from the ‘unofficial Facebook blog’ AllFacebook and is aptly named Facebook Demographic Statistics.

You simply choose the country and the age group, or groups, you’re interested in (you can compare up to 3) and the site creates a chart showing the number of active Facebook users fitting the chosen profile each day over the last month.

The chart above shows the growth in UK active users in the 60-65 and 55-59 age groups. Perhaps not age profiles typically associated with online social networking, but both apparently showing sustained growth to 157,280 and 187,705 active users respectively by 25th January this year. That’s relatively small beer compared to the 750,199 aged 45-54 and the 2,029,595 aged 35-44 – and certainly to the 6,022,786 aged 18-25. However, it does still show that Facebook is gradually attracting an increasingly mature audience.

Another application offered by AllFacebook that you might be interested in ranks the performance of Facebook Pages – which let users become ‘fans’ of their favourite brands, celebrities, places, or whatever. Facebook Pages have become an important component of social media activity for many commercial and nonprofit brands but until now it hasn’t been possible to easily compare how well your Page is performing. Now you can use the AllFacebook Pages Statistics function to see a ranking of Pages by sector (including nonprofit) number of fans and growth rate.

Top of the nonprofit pages at the moment are The Red Ribbon Army and NPR.

Barack Obama, understandably, tops the Pages polls overall, with 4,641,291 fans. While Coca-Cola comes second with 2,315,954 fans – meaning that Obama is twice as popular as Coke (and better for you too!-)

Posted in Facebook, Online advocacy, Online fundraising, Social networking, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

As Facebook hits 150m users, Social Networking sites get 1 in 10 UK Christmas Internet visits

Posted by Bryan on January 9, 2009

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Earlier this week Robin Goad, Research Director at Internet research company Hitwise, released data that revealed a new high in terms of online social media usage in the UK over Christmas. Naturally enough, Christmas is typically the busiest time of year for social networks, but Christmas 2008 saw several new highs which reaffirm (were it needed) the scale of online social networking amongst UK internet users.

According to Hitwise data, visits to Social Networks accounted for over 10% of all UK Internet visits in the week ending 27/12/08 – the first time the company has ever seen them pass the 10% mark. Over the whole of 2008, traffic to those sites classified by Hitwise as Social Networks (top 5 sites being Facebook, YouTube, Bebo, MySpace, and Yahoo Answers) has apparently grown by 20% to make it the fourth most popular category after Entertainment, Search Engines, and Shopping & Classifieds.

Key to breaking the 10% threshold was Facebook, the UK’s most popular Social Networking site, which accounted for 1 in every 22 site visits during Christmas week – making it the second most visited website after Google UK.

Which is perhaps not surprising, given yesterday’s new year blog post by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, announcing that Facebook now has 150 million users world-wide – up by 50 million in just 4 months and spread across 170 countries and territories. And before you discount this vast number on the assumption that most never visit their profile after the initial novely has worn-off, that 150m is apparently ‘active users’ – with almost half of them using Facebook every day.

All in all, a very clear new year message for any fundraisers looking to engage with supporters online who have yet to really take Social Networking seriously. It’s not a fad. It’s a massive opportunity. So add it to your new year resolutions right now!

Posted in Facebook, MySpace, Social networking, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Two twitterers keep the tweets flying thick and fast at the International Fundraising Congress

Posted by Bryan on October 16, 2008

I’m over at the 28th International Fundraising Congress in Holland right now, nursing a bad cold with lots of Lemsip and relaxing a bit after giving a couple of morning sessions back to back on The Future of Fundraising in a Networked Society.

One of the great things about conferences like this is the opportunity to catch-up with folks you just don’t get the opportunity to see much the rest of the year, a case in point here being my catching-up with Howard from fundraising.co.uk and Jonathan from Justgiving – who I usually only talk to online. The two of them are apparently the only delegates out of some 950 folks here from all around the world who are microblogging their experience at various sessions using Twitter. I only found this out when Jonathan mentioned that he’d been twittering away in the back row of my second session this morning (including mention of the ‘dubious’ Dutch language ‘are you lonely’ Facebook ad that appeared in my profile when I was using it to illustrate a point – see above!-).

You can follow the full results of their marathon twittering here.

Btw – for anyone who attended my sessions who is wanting to get the presentation downloads – I’ll post details of the IFC web address where you can get these as soon as I find-out what it is.

Time for another Lemsip now.

Posted in Blogging, Facebook, Fundraising, Online fundraising, Twitter, Uncategorized, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

More encouragement for smaller UK charities to start fundraising online

Posted by Bryan on August 18, 2008

I doubt if there can be many fundraisers out there who would claim that online fundraising does not represent a significant opportunity for income growth (if they do then I can only assume that they’re intending to retire within the next 5 years or so). Even those in the most sophisticated organisations generally admit that they are only just beginning to tap into online income potential. However, I do meet quite a few – particularly from smaller organisations – who admit to holding-back on online fundraising because of a lack of experience, resources, or budget (or all three).

If this is you, then don’t worry – you’re not alone. Research undertaken this year by sector think tank nfpSynergy revealed that only 41% of UK charities with under £1m turnover actually have the facilities to accept online donations. Given that the majority of the UK’s c200k registered charities raise under £1m, that’s a lot of fundraisers missing-out on the opportunity to generate income online.

Fortunately there was some news earlier this month that will hopefully generate some discussion amongst the missing 41% and help motivate more of them to think about fundraising online. Everyclick, the UK search engine that donates 50% of its revenue to UK charities, has launched a new online fundraising platform adding personal sponsorship fundraising pages, ecommerce, and eVouchers to its secure online donation and search fundraising services.

Of the three it was the personal sponsorship pages that I was most interested to see, as they enable charities of any size and level of experience to offer online donors the ability to set-up their own fundraising page to raise money from their friends and family – and so tap into the growth of Community Fundraising 2.0.

Unfortunately, I must admit to being a bit underwhelmed by what they’re offering. Given the length of time that such services have been available from competitors such as JustGiving and bmycharity I had hoped that Everyclick might have taken the opportunity to leapfrog them and offer a richer fundraising environment. Perhaps with such things as video and blog functionality to really help individuals engage with their personal networks. Instead, the pages only provide the basic minimum of functionality, with tabs for the fundraiser, their charity, and a list of people supporting them. Embed code is provided for a simple widget and search-related income can be allocated to individual pages, but that seems to be it. Have to admit it all looks a bit old fashioned and seems like a missed opportunity for Everyclick – especially given that they’re the company who launched the innovative Santa Swing video campaign last Christmas, providing personalised video cards (with your friends dancing as Santa or an Elf – still live and well worth a look).

Financially, the heart of Everyclick’s competitive proposition is that more of the money donated goes to the chosen charity, thanks to their charging a 4.8% all-inclusive transaction fee which it claims results in its charities receiving £12.20 from a £10 credit card donation with Gift Aid compared to £11.93 from “a leading competitor”.

Clearly when comparing the different companies providing these types of service, transaction fees are an important consideration. But both the functionality and look and feel of the pages that can be created are also very important – increasingly so as people get more used to creating their own rich media online profiles at social network sites. So I’m really surprised that none of the UK companies providing these services has yet broken-away from the basic ‘electronic sponsorship form’ page style.

However, at the end of the day the fact that such services are available to all charities with no set-up costs and no specialist experience needed remains a very good thing – and hopefully the coverage achieved by the Everyclick launch will not only benefit them but also the sector at large as more small charities wake-up to the range online fundraising opportunities now available to them.

Posted in Facebook, Fundraising, Online fundraising, Social networking, Sponsored events, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

New pet lovers social network launches with talking pets viral campaign

Posted by Bryan on July 30, 2008

At the moment it seems like there’s a new niche social network launching every couple of weeks, and this week its the turn of UK animal welfare charity The Blue Cross to enter the Web 2.0 world with a re-launch of its existing All About Pets information website as a new social network site. Developed by DVA, the site offers most of the basic community site features as well as providing access to the wealth of quality pet care information the charity produces.

The Blue Cross is a client of the agency I work for and as part of the site launch we’ve developed them a fun viral campaign that lets pet lovers upload photos of their pets (or use the cute ones provided), animate them to say any message they want to type in, and then email their talking pet message to their friends or upload it to their Facebook profile. Just click on the image above to see what I mean – and go to talkingpets.org to send your own messages (remember to turn your volume up).

Added to this we’ve also developed what is apparently a world first for online advertising, with ad units that scrape the web page they appear on, identify the H1 tag, and from this make the animated dog in the ad read-out the headline from the main story on the page. Readers can then type their own message into the ad to see the dog speak again before clicking-through to the talkingpets.org microsite.

All great fun and, from the first few days data, a campaign that is certainly resulting in a whole lot of talking pet emails flying into people’s in boxes – and hopefully lots of pet lovers signing-up at the All About Pets site.

I must admit that usually when I hear that a charity is developing a ‘viral campaign‘ I’m a bit sceptical, as for every great example that spreads like wildfire (like Macmillan’s virtual coffee morning) there are a great many that never get far beyond the charity’s staff and their closest friends. The truth is that providing the type of content that lots of people want to send to lots of their friends just isn’t that easy for most charities – given that, in the main, the viral momentum generated through generating shock or offence simply doesn’t fit with most charity brands. In the case of talkingpets.org it’s a combination of surprise, fun, and an extremely high level of personalisation that lie behind the strength of the campaign – or viraliciousness as JWT’s Colvyn Harris describes it in his post on what makes a viral ad.

If you’ve worked-on or seen any other really effective charity viral campaigns then do leave a comment to let me know about them.

Posted in Email, Facebook, Online advertising, Social networking, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

Finerday, an older folks social network, set to launch next week

Posted by Bryan on June 26, 2008

Contrary to the countdown on the Finerday holding page – which when I took the screen shot above seemed to suggest that it won’t be live for over 106 years (they’ve since fixed it) – this new social networking site aimed at ‘older people and their families’ is apparently all set to launch next Friday, 4th July.

Endorsed by the charity Age Concern, Finerday will be a free to use site and, rather than simply following in the footsteps of the UK’s other over 50s social network site SagaZone, its focus is clearly stated as “linking all of your family, whatever their age”. This ‘linking’ is supported through easy uploading and sharing of family photos (which seems likely to be a key function) plus integration with Facebook, Bebo, Skype, GMail, and Yahoo! – and seems like a sensible move, as it offers older users a reason to engage with social media that they may not have had before.

Forrester’s technographics research suggests that less than 10% of active UK internet users aged over 65 currently engage with social networks, compared to over 70% in the 16 to 24 age groups. So it’ll be interesting to see how well Finerday manages to capitalise on the existing engagement of younger family members to boost interest amongst the older ones.

From the sneak preview of the site (developed by social website specialists Kwiqq) it looks to have a nicely designed, simple interface with enlarged icons to help less frequent users of keyboards and mice keep up with their more computer-savvy younger family members.

Added to this, post-launch Finerday are apparently intending to market the site bundled with a broadband service and a low cost computer adapted for older people – which illustrates a real commitment to their vision of engaging older consumers with social media.

Definitely an initiative to keep an eye on.

Posted in Facebook, Social networking, Web 2.0, Web design | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Causes App celebrates first birthday – but surely there is more potential for Facebook fundraising?

Posted by Bryan on May 30, 2008

Last Saturday was an important anniversary in Social Networking terms, marking one year since Facebook launched Facebook Platform, the toolkit that enables the development of 3rd party Applications (Apps) that integrate directly with Facebook user data. The sudden explosion in Apps resulting from this was a significant driver of the site’s massive growth in popularity throughout 2007, and according to Facebook stats site Adonomics it has led to the release of almost 27,000 Apps to-date.

The same day was also the first anniversary of the biggest non-profit Facebook App, ‘Causes’ from Project Agape (now also available on MySpace).

A runaway success from launch in terms of installations, Project Agape marked the anniversary with the release of statistics on its first year’s activity. Apparently they now have a total of 12 million registered users (95,886 daily active users when I just checked) supporting over 80,000 US and Canadian non-profit organisations. Other countries are still being considered for inclusion, but in a post on the Causes discussion board earlier this month it was explained that “Supporting donations to UK-based charities is still a project we’re interested in, but we are strapped for resources and cannot provide a date”.

80,000 non-profits being represented on two of the world’s biggest Social Networking sites is undoubtedly great news, with the App clearly tapping into a widespread desire amongst site users to share their support for charitable causes.

However, when you look at the figures released in terms of hard cash it seems like Causes still has some way to go before it becomes a significant income generator for the organisations involved. Over the last 12 months, $2.5 million has been raised through Causes for 19,445 organisations – equating to an average of just $126 per organisation. No donations at all have been made to 75% of the 80,000 organisations being ‘supported’.

Don’t get me wrong. I still think Causes is a great initiative and I do understand when other commentators have observed that this is $2.5 million that these organisations would not have had otherwise. However, I wholeheartedly believe that supporter engagement on Social Networking sites has the potential to deliver massively more in fundraising terms than what currently appears to be the equivalent of an online small change collection tin.

Perhaps it’s simply that the Causes ‘Digital Badge’ approach to supporter engagement just doesn’t lend itself to generating higher levels of financial engagement? Is it just too easy to install the App and choose a few organisations to support by putting their badge on your profile and that’s it – job done?

By contrast, those Apps which extend the tried-and-tested sponsored challenge fundraising approach to Social Networking sites seem to better illustrate the real Community Fundraising potential of sites like Facebook. For example, Justgiving.com (which enables individuals to set-up fundraising pages in support of their sponsored activities) has seen significant uptake of its Facebook App (see their latest stats here) and identified Facebook as its second biggest referrer after Google – a trend confirmed by Hitwise UK.

Anyone else got any examples of where organisations are managing to raise significant amounts on Social Networking sites?

Posted in Facebook, Fundraising, MySpace, Online advocacy, Online fundraising, Social networking, Sponsored events, Uncategorized, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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